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AlineSaarinen

Aline Saarinen’s combination of creativity and plain speaking made her an unusually engaging art critic and prompted the National Broadcasting Company to make her chief of their Paris news bureau, the first woman to hold such a position. Saarinen began contributing to Art News in 1944, quickly becoming their managing editor before becoming associate art editor for the New York Times in 1947. In 1958, she wrote the bestselling The Proud Possessors, about American art collectors. In 1962 she commented on a new acquisition of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and began regular appearances as a television art critic, with unusual ways of interpreting pieces for her audience like comparing a sculpture of a runner to film clips of sprinters. NBC hired her as their third woman reporter in 1964, where she covered a variety of topics and also served as moderator for a show called For Women Only, which addressed topics ranging from abortion to divorce. In 1971, NBC promoted her to chief of the Paris bureau, little more than a year before her death.